Why We Kick Others When We're Down

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Just failed a test or screwed up a project at work? Chances are
more likely you'll put down others who are different from you to
try to lift yourself back up, a new study suggests.

"This is one of the oldest accounts of why people stereotype and
have prejudice: It makes us feel better about ourselves," says
Jeffrey Sherman of the University of California, Davis, who
co-wrote the study. "When we feel bad about ourselves, we can
denigrate other people, and that makes us feel better about
ourselves."

Psychologists have considered two possibilities why people
feeling bad about themselves might show more prejudice than the
highly confident, Sherman said: Low
self-esteem either enhances negative evaluations of others,
or makes you less likely to suppress those biases you already
harbor.

There was no agreement on either — "People were using the exact
same data to make completely different arguments about why,"
Sherman said — so Sherman and California-Davis colleague Thomas
Allen set out to determine the "why" for themselves. Their
conclusion: Low self-esteem increases the
intensity of negative prejudices.

Hidden prejudice

The researchers set up an experiment to break down the egos of
some participants and then see how likely they were to show
racial
prejudice.

The researchers had 57 students take a very difficult 12-question
test that requires creative thinking. No one answered more than
two items correctly. About half of the participants were given
their lousy test results and told the average score was 9, to
make them feel bad about themselves. The others were told their
tests would be graded later.

Then all of the participants completed a test to tease out any
racial prejudice. They watched a computer monitor while a series
of positive words, negative words and pictures of black or white
faces appeared. First, participants had to press the "E" on their
keyboard for either black faces or negative words and the "I" key
for white faces or positive words.

Then the groupings were reversed with participants having to
press one key for black faces or positive words, and another for
white faces or negative words.

The thinking went that if participants had negative associations
with black people, they would find the second task more
difficult, and if they had negative associations with white
people, that would make the first test more challenging. This
should be especially true when people feel bad about themselves.

As expected, those who were feeling bad about their test
performances showed more evidence of
implicit prejudice.

Why we kick others

The researchers then applied the results to a computer model that
included four processes that could occur to get to the end
result, such as the degree to which our biases get activated
in the brain, and whether we overcome such biases. They found
that people who felt bad about themselves were more likely to
show prejudice not because they became less likely to suppress
the feelings they already had, but because those feelings were
activated to a greater degree.

The difference is subtle but important, Sherman said.

"If the problem was that people were having trouble inhibiting
bias, you might try to train people to exert better control," he
said. "The issue is that our mind wanders to more negative
aspects of other groups.

"The way around that is to try and think differently about other
people. When you feel bad about yourself and catch yourself
thinking negatively about other groups, remind yourself, 'I may
be feeling this way because I just failed a test or something.'"

The research was detailed online Feb. 11 in the journal
Psychological Science.